Being organized isn’t something you need to be born with to be good at. I have always been a planner. If there is an idea to do something, my mind will immediately spiderweb into the multiple ways that idea can be carried out. It doesn’t matter if it’s for work, school, recreation. To be good at planning, or someone who plans a lot, can often be confused with someone who is organized, but it’s not the same.
I often describe particularly creative and eccentric people as “they think like a tree”. You can almost see their ideas branch and grow out of their head. In a similar way to how my mind spins plans, some people spout ideas like they’re growing trees. It’s possible to see 5, 10, 100 different avenues at the same time that hypothetically end up with some variation of the end goal.
Organization is what enables us to store these countless possibilities, access them, prioritize, and then act on what we’ve decided is most important to act on. Enough organization allows us to do this efficiently and with relatively low stress.
Strength or Flaw?
Just like having a million ideas at once makes it near impossible to be organized, too much organization and process can hamstring business creativity. It can be tricky to find the right balance of planning, ideating, and getting things done. Applying the right level of organization can help that.
Being more organized helps you to find what works for you faster and more easily. An organized mind is like having a library catalogue system for your brain, helping you navigate the constant inflow of information in your head and out there in the world. You can develop, tweak, or adopt a system that takes advantage of what you’re naturally skilled at or passion about.
There are countless books, blog posts, and videos about time management. Many different systems exist for project management. And there is no shortage of advice out there that may or may not be helpful for you. Everyone is unique, and what works for them won’t necessarily work for anyone else. But, with some effort, everyone can find the system for them eventually.
The Treadmill
When I was a kid, most of my life was structured for me, between school, sports, and play-dates. As I got older, I gained more freedom. I got to decide what time I’d wake up in the morning, what I’d eat for dinner, and who I’d spend time with. As we gain life experience, we become more proficient at tasks, others rely on us more and more, and we set bigger expectations for ourselves. The structure directly imposed on you by others lessens, and the world you live in is increasingly a product of your own making. As we develop our personality and experience, we fall into habits and form this different kind of structure. The more structure, the more organized we feel.
I realize how easy it was for me to fall into a structured routine of my own making. Wake up, check email, make to-do list, shower, go to work. Take your first meeting at 5AM, because you work across timezones. Be in the office by 7:30AM because that’s when your boss gets in. Make social plans 6 weeks ahead, because that’s the sweet spot between friend’s availability and remembering you’re doing something.
Rinse and repeat
Your routine is validated because it’s what everyone else is doing or striving to do. It’s a treadmill. The more you plan, the more you need to plan. People expect more of you, they expect you to be on top of things, and their affirmations reinforce you’re doing it all right. If you don’t do those things, you’re unorganized, flakey, unreliable. No one wants that! Being on the treadmill means high fives and promotions, compliments and free coffees. People want to do stuff with you, for you, it’s gratifying.
The first step is acceptance
Most of us who are on this treadmill of life, recognize we are there. We know there’s something wrong with what we’re doing, but often can’t put a finger on it. So we pick up something else; recreational, often health related. Like meditation, running, games night, or preparing for a big trip you’ll do next year. We acknowledge we’re ‘too’ something, like ‘work focused’ or ‘unhealthy’, and so we cram something else into our schedule to make up for our deficiency. The aim is to enhance our current lives, improve ourselves and our experiences with others. But more often than not, this one more thing is a coping mechanism, a band-aid solution to a bigger problem.
A friend recently asked me if I had any advice on project management systems. They’re considering how to build a business that better unlocks their time to spend on things they care about more. It got me thinking about different methods and practices for time management, project management, and overall organization.
I kept coming back to the underlying importance of organizing yourself. The more organized you are, the more you can optimize your treadmill life. But, if you focus on organization first – you can avoid the treadmill altogether.
What’s so great about being organized?
I have a habit of jumping from problem to discerning solution in one fell swoop. It means I can get things done quickly and, typically, in an effective way. But challenging your assumptions is necessary to make sure you’re focusing on the most important things. Am I solving the important problem, or am I solving an interesting problem? So let’s go back and dig into the value of being organized.
What makes you organized? or disorganized? Why does it matter how organized you are?
When I’m organized…
I am more on top of my work, I prioritize better, I hit deadlines. When I do those things, I make people I work with (teammates, managers, reports, customers) happier. They get more done as a result of my organization. We both win, and they want to work with me again and advocate for me.
When I’m organized, I know what tasks I need to do and when. I know what the dependencies of those tasks are. Are they blocked? blocked by what? is it a quick/easy fix, or a long/hard one? It’s easier to stay on top of work. It’s quick and easy to find what’s needed to do next. I know how the small tasks feed in to the big goals. My responsibilities, what is expected of me and what I expect of myself are all more clear.
When I am disorganized
On the flip side, when I am disorganized I feel scrambled. The less organized I am, the less efficient I feel. I’m stressed, guilty because I’m letting people down, and the more stress and guilt makes me feel even worse. My energy drains, and then I’m not as effective at doing anything, and the spiral continues downwards. No one wants to work with me when I’m scatter-brained.
Why does it matter how organized you are?
Think back to the library catalogue analogy. Depending on your personality, your learning style, and what’s important to you right now, you’re going to have preference for how complex your catalogue is. Do you want to be able to access every little bit of information available? You might have a hugely complex catalogue, or organization system. But that means maintaining it and putting in a lot of ongoing effort to keep yourself trained on how to use that system. The less information that’s readily accessible also means less time, energy, and resources to maintain the system.
Regardless of which end of the spectrum you’re on, imagine being in a mindset where you can organize your thoughts better, and be more intentional about what you do. Then have the right combination of time, motivation, and circumstance to do it, and actually enjoy it in the moment. In a world where information overload and overstimulation has run rampant, being organized can help you keep your sanity. There isn’t one level of organization that’s perfect, there is a balance that works well enough for you.
Setting your baseline and boundaries
If you’ve read anything else by me, you probably can tell that I’m a big fan of goal setting. Identifying what you are trying to accomplish and establishing what those outcomes look like. Once I can organize my thoughts, priorities, and plans, then I can be proactive about how I spend my time. Having goals or target outcomes accessible somewhere, allows you to take a moment once in a while, and reflect on “am I doing what I want to be doing?”
Before I launch into full-scale planning mode, I try to first take a level view on what outcomes I am trying to achieve. I shouldn’t want to build a whole financial model, hiring plan, and funding avenues if I don’t know why I’m doing it. The planner part of me loves jumping straight into the brainstorm document and start playing with numbers and outcomes right away. And it’s okay to do this sometimes. But this is also where I often need to actively hold back the urge to. If I skip the organization part and jump straight into planning thoughts every time, there’s no way I’m focusing on the best things.
This is where you take a step back, breath, and think first “why?”. What outcomes am I hoping to see as these actions progress? Level-setting my expectations. I’ve started doing this more and more in my everyday life as well as work, and have been way happier with my outcomes.
Questions to be asked
Building your path to better organization is not easy, and is often personal. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help guide the way.
- What are you trying to get out of this?
- Do you want to go on more vacations? Trying to be less stressed all the time? Do you want to spend more quality time with friends and family? Make more money?
- Why do you want to be organized?
- What do you think it will help?
- What is blocking you?
- What are you trying to do next?
- Are you trying to get yourself organized? A team? A business unit or company?
- How much time do you have? Do you want a robust solution with training, that costs more money, or do you want to start out small and, with baby steps, iterate?
A big part of level-setting is reckoning with yourself what you’re trying to get out of this behavioural change.
Think about what aspect(s) of organization you want to improve
1. Motivation – for example: you procrastinate; you make excuses for not doing tasks; you seem to get a lot of your best work done at the 11th hour right before a deadline
2. Prioritization – for example: you always have too many things you need to do; you’re not sure what the relative importance of one task versus another is; you’re more likely to pick up the next thing on your desk or something that someone has just called you about rather than something that might actually be more important but you just don’t know
3. Saying ‘no’ – for example: you take on more work than you can reasonably do; you hate turning down work/opportunities; you consider other people’s priorities and needs but you often leave yourself out of that equation
4. Being intentional – for example: you struggle with finding the right balance of doing the work for yourself versus your client versus your boss/company; you aren’t sure how connected your day-to-day is with your bigger goals; you’re not sure if what you spend most of your time on is helping you in the long run
Something else?
Once you have your personal baseline, you can consider which systems, tools and methodologies to try out.
Tools for the job
There are many systems, frameworks, and software out there designed to help time management, project management, and organization. You can start small and tweak or iterate to make a system that works for you. Or, you can implement a more robust system and follow someone else’s guidelines.
For reference, here are some good descriptions of project management methodologies. In my experience, people sometimes get too caught up in the process of exact frameworks. But these structures can help you frame how to manage your own system, what to adopt and what to use as a reference point. There are operations experts sharing their knowledge, like Rachel Flood’s Stop Using Spreadsheets webinars. You can check out her guide available here.
Many great frameworks are also out there that help with time management or decision-making. These can be used and applied similarly to project management methods. If you are looking for a non-fiction book to read and are interested in the topic of time management, I would recommend Oliver Burekman’s Four Thousand Weeks. It’s entertaining and consolidates healthy and useful perspectives on time management.
For those looking to apply software solutions, here is an extensive list of project management software. Note I am not endorsing Monday (or their selection process), just that they put together a great comprehensive list of options.
An example for your reference
If you have your own methods to keep organized that you’re perfectly happy with, this section probably won’t be of much use to you. But if you’re on the journey to introduce more organization into your life, here’s an example to help you build your own framework.
To try and stay organized at work, I keep 3 lists.
List 1
My on-going Kanban board that I keep in Notion. The purpose of this list is to act as my backlog of ideas (like blog posts), overarching activities I need to do (like register a business or pay taxes), and set priorities and deadlines for these items.
List 1 has the following categories:
| Category / swim lane | Purpose |
| none | Essentially, this is my backlog; random thoughts or ideas to do with future work that have popped into my head. It’s also hidden from the board view, so I need to go into a table or list view to see it. |
| todo | Things I should do soon, like register a business name or reach out to a company for an intro call. |
| this week | todo items that I have prioritized for this week (I pull them off of my todo list and bring them into the ‘this week’ lane). |
| in progress | The items I’m currently working on. |
| done | The items I’ve completed. |
| won’t do | Items that I have actually decided I won’t do anymore. They get moved here. |
| blog | Potential blog topic ideas. I’ll pull one or two into the ‘this week’ category to prioritize working on that topic. |
I like Notion because you can transform the information from a kanban board to a table to a page, all using the same data objects. It also works across android, windows, and iOS, is shareable with anyone, and the free version works great for starting out.
The second list
This is my pen and paper list. It’s how I prioritize my weekly and daily tasks. I use a planner or a notepad with the days of the week.
Monday morning or Sunday night (depending when my first meeting is and what time I want to start Monday AM) I look through my kanban board, pull an item or two over to ‘this week’, and clean up the rest of the board as necessary. Then I break down those topics into smaller tasks for the week, written down in the planner.
For example: Monday – (1) brainstorm blog post ideas, (2) reach out to person x, (3) follow up with person y, etc.
If there are items on the Kanban board that are ‘due’ that week, they’ll get written down in the planner. Such as, a project I need to finish by end of day that week, or a proposal I need to issue.
and the third
List 3 is my project pipeline list. It’s where I keep track of sales discussions and potential projects. I use Hubspot because it’s free to set up, it’s reputable, I’ve used it before, and it has all the data-related things I need for what I do.
This list is a more robust system that can be added to if needed. I only have it set up for the bare minimum right now, but it’s easy enough to build up and iterate on if I need to in the future. This has the more longer term tasks, like scheduling follow up meetings a month from now. It keeps all my contacts and companies in one place, and I can add or change their data labels as I see necessary.
Bigger teams will have bigger, more complex, and a larger volume of systems to help everyone stay organized. Sometimes you have to use someone else’s system, sometimes you can get them to use yours. I’ve found personal management methods, that can work side-by-side with other systems, help me to be organized for myself. Me being organized, means I can effectively plan, train, and execute on increasingly helpful and useful activities for others.